Science Of Cooking

Ghee use to be important aspect of Indian diet

You must have heard a lot about of art of cooking, must have seen various chef teaching various recipes, preparing some yummy good looking delight but we hardly talk about science of cooking.

As per Bhagwat geeta Def of Good food in chapter 17 is:

"Food that increases a person's age, intellect, strength, immunity, and brings cheerfulness and provide a stable heart which ultimately provides a stable mind should have following characteristics: it should be juicy i.e it should have five taste i.e. Sweet, Salty , bitter,pungent i.e. chili, Sour i.e. something like imli, it should be lubricious i.e. it should have animal fat like ghee, it should reside in the body for some time (i.e. fibrous ), and it should be acceptable to the body (i.e. it should not cause nausea, bloating, depression, maniac or make you feel shaky etc) & this type of food are preferred by person who are Satvik (i.e. a True Gentleman).”

It doesn't say that you should be eating vegetarian or nonvegetarian food, infact it just says that food should make you feel better both mentally as well as physically.

Unfortunately in todays modern world we have forgotten the basics, I will give you simple eg: Suppose I ask you why we add oil while cooking food, I bet most of the people never even think about this , I asked this similar question to few qualified engineers, unfortunately they were not aware and they have never thought about it, even the ladies are not aware about it, and they actually think that oil is just for taste :).

Similarly Ghee ( clarified butter) used to be very important part of Indian diet but now citing various health reason it has very limited application in Indian food, today people started to avoid it b'coz of health studies published in various science journal regarding the negative effect of use of Ghee, but Ghee was a very important source of animal fat in Indian diet, though westerners eat primarily non veg food Indian has a typical vegan meal, animal fat is one of the requirement of our digestion system just as our digestion system requires water, salt and sweetness.

It was also a custom in Indian delicacy to serve a sweet after the meal, as in china they use to serve sweet green tea, this was b'coz sweetness help in digestion as fat help in digestion in fact we require a combination of taste, fat and fiber to aid our digestion or say for smooth functioning of our body as well as our digestive system, everything that is available in nature which is eatable in bulk quantity is sweet in nature, has it own fat as well as fiber, the meat of animal has it own taste it is sweet in nature, has it own fat and fiber. You will not find any food which is sour, chili or bitter or very salty available in nature on its own,  and we can't fill our stomach on green chilies or bitter gourd, f we do than we certainly will become ill pretty soon.

A famous cook wrote on her website that she has prepared some oil free recipe and have tested it on herself and is completely safe for consumption. My Dear friend the famous cook might have really tested the food on herself but it must have been only once in a while that's why she couldn't feel the ill effect of such a diet, a person require oil in his/her diet. Cooking oil or Ghee does not only provides you some of the essential nutrients, but it also is responsible for the combustion of your food in your stomach, i.e. it is responsible for other nutrients to be absorbed by your body, it is also important for your gut movement as they provide the necessary lubrication but nothing in excess is good for anyone, here again the key is "Yog" i.e. right balanced approach. When you will eat right you will feel good not only physically but as well as mentally.

This lack of scientific knowledge regarding food preparation shows the flaw in our education system which not even teaches us even about the most important perspective of our live i.e. about the Science of Cooking. Om :)

Why we should not Cook Food in too much Oil

Though cooking has it disadvantages, the cooking of our food has given us various advantages over others in terms of cooking the food as per our body need, for eg: suppose you are diabetic so you can cut the sugar, cooking was a great science in India but unfortunately  today we have forgotten our origins as well as science of cooking. Out of all the animals human are the only animal which processed the grain in order to makes it a food, all other animal either feed on raw juicy grain or they eat raw meat and b'coz of this different style of cooking since million of years, we will see extreme fat , thin, bald, short and tall human and rashes on skin in human  while animals look similar in terms of physique as well as looks :) .

There was a time in India when all the sweets were used to be manufactured using desi ghee but now a days we hardly see ghee being used in making sweets mainly b'coz of high cost of ghee as well as availability of no odor oil like soyabean oil which is actually not a original oil of India and also a mass belief in people regarding the bad effect of ghee thanks to the so called science Journal.

Now I will like to shed some light on the topic and I will like to start from the scratch, first let me ask you a question are we herbivores or carnivores or omnivores,  let say we are herbivores so what is the herb available in nature that is salty in nature by itself, or why we add salt in our diet, what will happen if all of a sudden we landed in a jungle, in order to understand this don't eat salt for say 9 to 10 days, your body will start craving for salt, so if you are in jungle there is no other thing in nature other than blood i.e. salty in nature now we are not blood sucking animal like bat or leaches that thrive on blood but rather the traces of blood on fresh hunt is enough for us.

So I may have cleared your doubt on the fact that we are not herbivorous but it is true that we are omnivores now do one thing make sprouted grain in your home and eat it every day, try different version of sprouted grain and eat them as they are similar to living juicy grain, you may try this but I will tell you that you will find it hard to have your gut movement after few days, b'coz even after eating so much herbs you don't have sufficient oil in your guts, now if you want to experiment outdoor how much mustard you will have to eat to generate two table spoonful of mustard oil in your gut, just imagine. So what exactly I wanted to do here is generate a thought in your mind that though we are omnivores we don't require so much of  vegetable oil in our diet as it is not natural but yeah 1 teaspoonful twice a day will be good enough, as we are eating so much of herb like rice or wheat but that will not solve your gut movement issues, so if you are only on vegetable oil you will have to take more oil, which is again not natural for your digestive system hence will cause trouble in the long run, secondly among various literature available, oil which has been generated by cold press method is said to be best and they believed that higher temperature extraction of oil degrades the quality of oil, hence how it is possible to use the same oil for high temperature cooking, also the method of providing daal tadka  in India involves heating the oil just little bit so that it just liberates out the smell of the oil, but now we have incompletely forgotten the science.

Now comes the point of animal fat, we can generate animal fat from the milk of the animal such as Cow, Buffalo or Goat which is called Ghee or say clarified butter, now as we are omnivore i.e. a animal which survives both on herbs as well as meat, we will eat meat too, meat has its own fiber + fat + sugar of flesh+ salt of blood, so it is complete food on its own and it has the right amount of fat which is good for your gut, we require animal fat, to absorb the salt and the other nutrients of the fiber in to our system in a better way along with the nutrients of animal fat itself, similar to as we require oil to absorb the benefits of herbs in our system as well as the nutrients of oil itself, so do we require to feed on animal meat always? no, here comes again the advantage of cooking, as our body changes with time, the changes are not external only, our body changes internally as well, so we can change the amount of nutrients to be fed to our body by means of changing fiber choosing softer fiber such as buckwheat on weekends or some weekdays, salt by means of using rock salt or sea salt as well as applying less or more Ghee over our food, or choosing ghee of a different animal in alternate days.

I hope I am able to convey my points :) Om.